Gold Coins and the greedy old man
An Adaptation
Sam was a greedy and selfish old man. Although he was very rich, he always wanted more money and never hesitated to cheat others in order to earn more money. He also never wished to share anything with others, preferring to keep everything to himself.
The selfish old man demanded a lot of hard work from his employees, but paid them very little wages and wherever he went he looked for different ways to fool people into giving him money or he would lie to them to avoid paying for things he had used or purchased.
One day, he lost a small bag that contained 50 gold coins. He was frantic; this was lot of money and money meant everything to him. He searched for the bag day and night. He sent his workers in search of the bag all around the town, but none could find it. He told his friends and neighbours that he had lost a bag of gold coins and asked them to keep a look out for the bag and return it to him if found.
After a couple of days, a ten-year-old girl who lived near Sam’s house told her father that she had found a small bag whilst playing in the fields and that it had 50 gold coins in it. Her father was one of Sam’s workers, so he knew the bag belonged to Sam. He told his daughter he would take the bag to Sam.
They weren’t very rich and the father could have kept the gold coins and not told anyone that they had found it, but the family was very honest and the father said it would be wrong to keep the bag since it did not belong to them but belonged to Sam.
He brought the bag to Sam and asked him to check whether the bag had 50 gold coins. Sam, who was very happy to get the coins, decided to play a trick. He shouted at his worker and said, “There were 75 gold coins in this bag and you gave me only 50! Where are the other coins? You have stolen them!”
The worker was shocked to hear this and he pleaded to his master that he gave whatever his daughter had found.
Selfish and greedy Sam did not accept it and they decided to take the issue to court to get the right judgment. The judge heard both the sides. He questioned the daughter and the worker about the number of coins they had found in the bag and they assured him it was only 50! The judge questioned Sam again and Sam replied, “Yes lord, I had 75 gold coins in my bag and now they gave me only 50! They have stolen my 25 coins!”
The Judge asked, “Are you sure you had 75 coins?” and Sam nodded his head.
Then the judge made his judgment: “Since Sam lost a bag of 75 gold coins and the bag found by the girl had only 50 coins, it means this bag doesn’t belong to Sam.”
Since there were no claims for the bag of 50 coins, the judge ordered that the girl and her father could have the 50 coins in appreciation of their honesty.
Sam learnt a very important lesson that day. Honesty is rewarded and lying and cheating is punished.
